Interest, politics and drift in policy implementation: the case of trafficking prevention measures in Brazil

This article scrutinizes the anti-trafficking efforts that the PT Government in Brazil undertook to implement the National Anti-Trafficking Policy in collaboration with different civil society organizations. Focusing on crime prevention measures, the article analyses the perceptions and understandings of trafficking, and the values and norms implicit in those, as well as the relationships developed between pubic officials and members of the civil society in this context. Examining everyday policy work, the article illustrates that policy implementation cannot be considered a mere technical-rational endeavor, in which replaceable officials deliver consistent and replicable outcomes based on unambiguous rules, assigned roles, and specified tasks and procedures. On the one hand, personality, personal motives and interests played a significant role in forging policy implementation focus and approach. On the other hand, the public officials struggled with the activists’ attempts to shift policy concerns and implementation into a direction that diverged from their own politics

Putting large-scale infrastructure projects first: the COVID-19 pandemic in indigenous Mexico

This article argues that whilst indigenous people are central to the Mexican president's official developmentalist discourse of bringing prosperity to the country's marginalised and poor, their needs during the COVID-19 pandemic have not been met and their interests have been sidelined. Whilst experiencing serious loss of trading revenue, negative impacts of misinformation, and lack of access to appropriate healthcare, indigenous Mexicans also faced the aggressive advance on their territories of large-scale infrastructure projects, which have become the backbone of the president's strategy for countering the economic recession caused by the pandemic. The discontinuation of relevant legal means to challenge the advance of the megaprojects during the pandemic effectively threatened indigenous people's democratic rights to protect their land, identities and way of life

Infrastructure, opposition and cultural survival in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec

The Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico has a fierce history of resistance, and the communities living there have their own infrastructural visions, which are rarely heard. In her research, Susanne Hofmann (LSE LACC) explores how residents interact with these projects while they advocate to not breaking with their ancestral cultural ties and ways of life

Security meanings and land defence in the context of the Interoceanic Corridor Infrastructure (CIIT) megaproject

This article examines the meanings of security in the context of the upheaval that an infrastructure megaproject can entail. In the centre of this article is the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (CIIT) project, one of the Mexican president’s most ambitious megaprojects. The CIIT is being promoted as a multimodal road and rail transport corridor, linking the Gulf of Mexico with the Pacific Ocean. It is projected as a viable alternative to the Panama Canal that would contribute to speeding up the global circulation of goods, as well as simultaneously stimulate the local economy. Megaprojects, be they for natural resource extraction or infrastructure construction, often change everything: the landscape, the population, the local economy, often with detrimental impacts to the environment, but also to communities’ established ways of living and their sociality. Based on interviews with local residents, the study shows that many of our respondents desired a horizonte seguro, a secure horizon, wishing for a foreseeable future, including certainty of their livelihoods, preservation of their natural world, stability of their social relations, and continuity of their established mode of living and being. The article explores how the production of the commons (lo común), a process that purposefully organises interdependence between humans and the natural world, is considered generative of security for alter-lifeworlds. Harm can therefore not be conceived as accruing to one being or set of beings in isolation. Subsequently, the article proposes an understanding of security as entangled or relational

Social Club Brandenburg : Innovative Orte des Lernens für Jugendliche auf dem Lande

Gedruckte Version im Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin erschienen: ISBN 978-3-7983-2398-8, ISSN 2193-6846SOCIAL CLUB Brandenburg beschäftigt sich mit innovativen Formen des Lernens und Lebens von Jugendlichen auf dem Lande. Ort der Untersuchung ist das ehemaligen (former) landwirtschaftlichen (agricultural) Mustergut Blumberg bei Casekow in der Uckermark / Brandenburg. In der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Ort Blumberg, dem Gutshaus und seiner Wirtschaftsbauten entwickeln Studierende im Bachelorstudiengang Architektur der TU Berlin Konzepte für eine Jugendschule als bauliche Erweiterung der Anlage. Im Sinne eines SOCIAL CLUB wird gezeigt, wie die Schule als soziales und wirtschaftliches Zentrum, auch den Ort Blumberg zu neuem Leben erwecken könnte.The design studio ‘Social club Brandenburg’ is exploring innovative ways that young people from rural areas live and learn. The site is the former archetypal estate of Blumberg in Casekow, Uckermark/Brandenburg. Architecture Students from the TU Berlin will consider how the place of Blumberg, its main house and associated agricultural buildings, can be expanded and converted into a Youth School. The aim of the school is to transform the former estate into a social and economic centre, breathing new life into Blumberg

Introduction to the Special Issue : Gender and Violence in Contexts of Migration and Displacement

Diese Sonderausgabe geht auf das Sommersymposium Reconsidering gender-based violence in the context of displacement and migration zurück, welches am 6. und 7. Juli 2017 an der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen stattfand. In den folgenden Arbeitspapieren werden verschiedene Formen geschlechtsspezifischer Gewalt untersucht, wobei die Schwachstellen des Mainstream-Feminismus vermieden werden, welcher Stereotype von Opferidentität und Marginalisierung reproduziert. Stattdessen betonen die Autorinnen die Rolle der Macht in Bezug auf verschiedene Arten von geschlechtsspezifischer Gewalt und achten dabei auf die komplizierten Ungleichheiten, die das Leben der Opfer strukturieren. Die Autorinnen tragen zu einem intersektionellen und akteurfokussierten Verständnis von geschlechtsspezifischer Gewalt unter Bedingungen der Mobilität innerhalb oder außerhalb von Nationalstaaten bei

Gender and natural resource extraction in Latin America: feminist engagements with geopolitical positionality

This article resituates the debate on approaches to gender in contexts of natural resource extraction in Latin America and, subsequently, outlines an intersectional, feminist proposal focused on geopolitical positionality, which points to the complex and global power relations that (re)position individuals and collectivities residing in spaces that have geopolitical value in a gendered way. This article draws on both empirical and theoretical research in/on extractive contexts, focusing on women, masculinities, and sexual markets. By paying special attention to the diversity of women's experiences and productive activities in extractive contexts, this article visibilizes their agency, as well as generates a more accurate account of how extractivist regimes operate and reconfigure gender relations on a local level. This ex-pands existing approaches, allowing a situated, feminist critique, which helps to refine the study of gender and gendered power relations in their intersection with processes of natural resource extraction